Privileges (Privilegia)

Since the late 16th century Mennonites in various countries have received official documents from rulers or governments defining their rights or privileges with respect to specific issues, usually including release from military service and from the swearing of oaths. Since the late 19th century, schools, language, mutual (aid) insurance, and the Mennonite inheritance system have been added to the contents of a requested Privilegium. Following is a list of known Privilegia:

(n) Bolivia, 1930; renewed and slightly revised on 16 March 1962, Decree no. 6030, President Victor Paz Estensoro; English translation printed in James Walter Lanning, "The Old Colony Mennonites of Bolivia: a case study" (MSc thesis, Texas A. and M. University., 1971), appendix B. The Bolivian privileges were abolished on 30 December 1975, and almost totally reinstated 27 March 1985.

Swiss and German Mennonite immigrants to British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, and Mennonites coming from Russia to the United States in the 19th century, did not obtain special privileges.

Refugees from the Soviet Union settling in Brazil in 1930 failed to obtain a Privilegium. The Mennonite request for alternatives to military service, presented to the Brazilian government, 28 March 1979, was again unsuccessful. Mennonites settling in Argentina beginning in 1986 also did not have a Privilegium.

Descendants of the Mennonites who arrived in Russia between 1788 and 1820 came to consider a Privilegium almost as an essential condition of settlement. Thus they had a strong tendency to consider emigration whenever key elements of privileges granted appeared to be threatened. The 1873 delegates sent by the Molotschna colony to explore settlement possibilities in North America were explicitly instructed on four points to be assured in an agreement with the host country. Although the 11,000 Russian Mennonites who immigrated to the United States in the 1870s were unable to obtain a Privilegium from the American government, the 7,000 going to Canada received the desired guarantees in a Cabinet order (see l above). Descendants of the latter made the successful negotiation of a Privilegium a necessary prerequisite in their migrations to Mexico, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Belize.

Many of the Privilegia, especially in recent times, are more a defining of mutual rights and obligations than the granting of special privileges. Generally they facilitate the maintenance of compact group settlement, thereby making it possible for local self-government to perpetuate effectively a number of peculiarly Mennonite communal arrangements. These, however, were just as effectively maintained by other groups, such as Old Order Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the United States and eastern Canada, who have no Privilegium.

Special privileges were not an unmixed blessing. While they fostered a stance of separation from the world by the defined separation from the host society (nonconformity), they also discouraged the developing of a sense of responsibility towards those outside the privileged community. The granting of special privileges to select groups was sometimes resented by members of the host society, especially in times of national crisis. Since similar resentment was directed also at immigrant groups who did not have a Privilegium but who stood out from the rest of society through differences in customs, language, and culture, it is difficult to determine to what ex tent these negative feelings were caused by the special privileges.